


A Lifetime Supply of Crab Wontons

by hollycomb



Category: South Park
Genre: Bar & Bat Mitzvah, Bathroom Sex, Birthday, Chinese Food, First Time, Graduation, M/M, Restaurants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:44:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times P.F. Chang's has influenced Kyle's emotional development.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lifetime Supply of Crab Wontons

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is from 2012 - my last archive update of this batch.

1.

Kyle had his eleventh birthday at P.F. Chang’s, which he thought was rather cheap of his parents, since technically he was footing the bill with his prize money. Since winning it the year before, he had barely dented his $5,000 worth of Chang’s, and still had $4,567.12 to spend. He wanted to go to Casa Bonita, mostly for the annual pleasure of not inviting Cartman, but his mother said it would be impractical not to host a party for all of his friends at P.F. Chang’s. Like Kyle and the rest of the Broflovski family, Sheila was very sick of P.F. Chang’s food and was eager to be rid of the temptation to dine there simply because it was free.   
  
Stan, like his father before him, never seemed to tire of P.F. Chang’s. He was excited about the party.  
  
“Dude, are you serious?” Kyle asked when Stan expressed this excitement on the walk home from school. “We just went there two weeks ago.” Randy had been their chaperone. He’d allowed Stan and Kyle to each have one sip of his rum-infused Good Fortune after dinner.   
  
“It’ll be fun, though,” Stan said. “Are you inviting the whole class?”  
  
“All the boys,” Kyle said, glumly. His mother didn’t want a ‘repeat of the Casa Bonita shenanigans,’ so she’d insisted that he even invite Cartman, who actually wasn’t much of a rival anymore, just a source of occasional irritation. Cartman was still a complete fucking asshole idiot douchebag, but Kyle had learned to tolerate him, seeing no way to get rid of him short of encouraging him to jump off another roof or depart to another war torn country; even those hadn’t worked.

The party was better than Kyle expected, even sort of fun, everyone spread across a table for twenty toward the back of the restaurant, near the bathrooms. His only major embarrassment was reminding his mother that he was too old for balloons.   
  
Stan gave him a big grey hoodie that Kyle had admired while they were killing time at the mall together over spring break. Kyle was surprised he’d remembered it.   
  
“Thanks, dude,” he said, and he put it on at the table, then felt stupid. Cartman snorted.  
  
“Are you trying to look butch, Kyle?” he asked. Cartman had altered his usual attire recently himself: he now wore chunky “masculine” jewelry, including a black cord necklace with a carved wooden Jesus fish on it. Kyle ignored Cartman’s comment and reached for his next gift, a pair of socks from Kenny.   
  
“Karen knitted them,” Kenny said, and Kyle heard Craig and Clyde snicker. The socks were two shades of yellow that nearly matched, and they were lumpy, more like oven mitts than footwear.   
  
“They’re awesome,” Kyle said. “Thanks.”   
  
Instead of cake, there were individual chocolate tortes for everyone, from the P.F. Chang’s dessert menu. Kyle’s had three candles in it, because that was all that could fit. Cartman made much of this, and called Kyle a toddler for the rest of the evening.   
  
“I hate my life,” Kyle said when he was alone with Stan in the parking lot, sitting on the curb and watching the other boys fling rocks from the landscaped flower beds at each other. Stan patted Kyle’s back.   
  
“That sweatshirt looks good on you, though,” he said.   
  
“Hmph,” Kyle said, sinking down into it more deeply. It was about two sizes too big. He liked to wear clothes that he could retreat into like tortoise shells. Stan knew this about him, and gifted accordingly. Kyle took comfort in that as he wondered if his twelfth birthday would be held here, too.   
  
2.  
  
Kyle pitched a fit when his mother announced that he’d be having his bar mitzvah at P.F. Chang’s.  
  
“Bar mitzvahs can cost thousands of dollars, bubbeh!” Sheila said as Kyle stomped up the stairs in a rage. “Have some financial sense, for crying out loud! You’re almost a man now.”   
  
“I wish I’d never made that stupid chicken joke!” Kyle shouted, and he went into his room, slamming the door behind him.   
  
At his computer, he was heartened to find that 101ballmations was online.   
  
69ingchipmunks: My mom sucks. Everything sucks. I hate everyone.  
101ballmations: what happened??????  
69ingchipmunks: Not that I even CARE about my stupid bar mitzvah, because I don’t, but if it’s supposed to mean something to like my family or whatever, why would they have it at P.F. Chang’s? Why, Stan?  
101ballmations: oh shit  
101ballmations: that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard  
101ballmations: its supposed to be special  
  
Kyle paused for a long time, staring at the screen. He was tender where Stan was concerned, of late. Stan was an early bloomer and had already had a blow job from Stacy Abbott. Kyle hated that this had happened, and he liked it when Stan said things like ‘special’ in regard to him, under any circumstances. He didn’t want to bring these two thoughts together to a conclusion necessarily, or yet.   
  
101ballmations: dude? you still there?  
69ingchipmunks: Yeah, sorry. My mom was yelling at me.   
101ballmations: maybe it won’t be that bad  
69ingchipmunks: It will be, Stan. Just the smell of that place puts me off at this point. I’ll be haunted by P.F. Chang’s for the rest of my life.   
101ballmations: damn  
101ballmations: those crab wontons are pretty good though  
69ingchipmunks: Stan, please.  
101ballmations: I always burn my tongue on them  
101ballmations: so that will probably happen  
  
This made Kyle smile, and he thought about expressing that in an emoticon, but that was pretty gay.   
  
101ballmations: sooo what do you want for your b-day?  
69ingchipmunks: A city-wide ban on Chinese food.  
101ballmations: what no! what about city wok!  
  
Now Kyle was laughing, and he couldn’t even remember why it really mattered where he had his bar mitzvah. It was just a dumb party for all his crusty old aunts and uncles anyway, and the awkward as fuck cousins.   
  
69ingchipmunks: Can you come over?  
101ballmations: yeah dude I’m on my way  
  
They mostly just did homework together until Stan had to go home, but it cheered Kyle a great deal to have him near. He still refused to acknowledge the reason, though he didn’t deny himself the opportunity to bury his face in his pillow and breathe in deeply after Stan had gone. Stan had been leaning against it while he worked, his history book propped against his folded knees. The pillow still smelled like his hair, or maybe it was more like his skin and his laundry detergent, with a faint hint of sweat. It was him, anyway: that Stan smell.   
  
3.  
  
At fifteen, Kyle was asked on his first date. The asker was a freshman named Doug who was not that cute, but they were the only two out gay guys at Park County High, so Kyle figured he’d better not burn any sexual bridges. To save himself the humiliation of being driven to the date by his mother, he agreed to endure the agony of a double date with Bebe and Stan, who had gotten his license back in October.   
  
To show that he wasn’t taking this seriously on a romantic level, Kyle suggested P.F. Chang’s, and offered to treat for everyone.  
  
Bebe ordered a salad, which Kyle found annoying. Who knew that P.F. Chang’s even had salads? Kyle had never noticed them, and his experience with the place was extensive, his prize money down to $3,287.57 now. Doug had tiger prawns, and Stan got the same thing he always did: two orders of crab wontons, Mongolian Beef, and two servings of rice, one white and one brown.   
  
“Look how much he eats,” Bebe said at one point, admiring Stan as he scraped the last gravy-soaked rice bits from his plate. Stan and Bebe were having sex on a regular basis. Stan had said it was ‘cool but weird,’ and made Kyle promise not to repeat that. Kyle had told Kenny, Wendy, and Ike, who were the only people he spoke to other than Stan. He supposed he also spoke to Doug now, though mostly only about Honors Chemistry. They were lab partners.  
  
“Aren’t you that kid who used to dress up as Butters’ henchman?” Stan said after the plates had been cleared. He was addressing Doug.  
  
“When I was like, four,” Doug said.   
  
“Yeah,” Stan said slowly. He was narrowing his eyes, nodding his head, trying to be cool. Kyle was annoyed but also kind of swooning toward him. “And — and that one time, in the basement at Mackey’s house, during the meteor shower. You guys dressed up like Charlie’s Angels, you and Butters.”  
  
“Oh, when wasn’t Butters dressed up like a girl, when we were kids?” Kyle said, feeling bad for Doug. “And you should talk, Stanley. You came to school as Raggedy Ann, after all.”   
  
“Raggedy Andy, asshole.”   
  
“Jesus, what’s the difference?”  
  
Stan and Kyle stared at each other until Bebe cleared her throat. Kyle looked down at his plate. There was heat pooling in his stomach, the kind that was usually a precursor to finding a place where he could be alone and beat off to the thought of Stan shoving him up against a wall and tearing his pants down. When he looked up again, Stan was drinking the very last meltings of his Pepsi, making a loud suctioning noise noise through his straw. Bebe was looking at Kyle, her lip slightly raised. Doug seemed oblivious.  
  
Doug was dropped off first, and then Bebe, who gave Stan a long, wet kiss goodnight while Kyle snarled out the window in the backseat. He did not move up to the passenger seat after Bebe had gone.  
  
“Where to, sir?” Stan asked.   
  
“Oh,” Kyle said. “Wherever. I don’t feel like going home yet.”  
  
“You’re seriously going to sit back there?”  
  
“Yes,” Kyle said. “I don’t feel like moving.”   
  
Stan drove around aimlessly, and Kyle hunched in the backseat, feeling nervous, as if something was actually going to happen, when he couldn’t even bring himself to move closer after that disgusting display between Bebe and Stan. He had felt something at the restaurant, when Stan had given him that long, angry look that was almost possessive. It was probably nothing, but there was still something simmering at the pit of his stomach, lukewarm now.  
  
“So that guy is kind of a tool,” Stan said. “I don’t know if you noticed.”  
  
“Doug?”  
  
“Yeah. Dougie. He’s also a freshman.”  
  
“So?” Kyle said. “He’s gay. What other choice do I have, in this town? Even Mr. Slave is taken.”   
  
“Gross, dude.”  
  
“Well!”  
  
They were both silent for a while. Kyle could smell the reek of Chang’s sauce all over his clothes, and he felt like he’d bathed in the stuff. He wondered what Stan’s mouth would taste more like: crab wonton filling or sticky brown Mongolian beef sauce. He was disturbingly aroused by the thought of a post-Chang’s make out, though not with the likes of Doug.   
  
“Who orders shellfish on a first date?” Kyle said.   
  
“Not me,” Stan said.  
  
“You don’t even like shrimp.” Kyle’s heart ached, suddenly and powerfully. He wanted to pull Stan’s arm into the backseat and cling.   
  
“Just wait until college to date,” Stan said. “That’s my advice.”   
  
“Easy for you to say. You’re getting laid.”   
  
“Dude, don’t lay that guy,” Stan said, and he frowned at Kyle in the rear view mirror. “And for the love of God, don’t let him lay you.”   
  
“I’m pretty sure that’s an improper use of that verb.”   
  
“Kyle, I mean it.”  
  
“I don’t care if you mean it! So what? You don’t get to tell me who to fuck! Not unless I get to tell you. Stop fucking Bebe! I demand it! How does that feel?”  
  
“You’re not going to fuck him, anyway,” Stan said, grumbling. Kyle got out of the car at the next red light, and stomped down Pinecrest Avenue angrily for almost ten minutes, Stan driving alongside him and begging him to get back in the car while other vehicles sped around them, the drivers laying on their horns and shouting at them to get out of the road.   
  
It was sort of a great first date. Stan had been there, after all. Kyle had the feeling Stan would end up with him on all of his dates, somehow, and would be there in the corner when Kyle lost his virginity, to bark at the guy who was taking it if he tried to fuck Kyle too hard.  
  
Kyle went to bed feeling inexplicably giddy, and got himself off to the thought of Stan’s come splashing hot and extra salty down his throat, on account of all the soy sauce he’d consumed.  
  
4.  
  
It was not Kyle’s choice to hold the graduation party dinner at P.F. Chang’s, and he told everyone ahead of time that they should not expect him to foot the entire senior class’s bill just because he still had $2,189.25 in Chang’s bucks.   
  
“Like anyone would expect you to be generous with your money, Jew,” Cartman said.   
  
Kyle was in a bad mood, and not just because Cartman was present. He wasn’t particularly happy about graduating, considering he hadn’t managed to lose his virginity or get into either of his top two colleges, so now he was headed for CSU with every-fucking-body else, including Stan, who would binge drink and expect Kyle to babysit him. Already they had signed up to share a dorm room. Kyle fully expected to have to watch Stan fuck girls because of this arrangement, and he could only hope that someday Stan would wake from a drunken stupor and see Kyle taking some dick, thereby fulfilling Kyle’s dream that Stan would be there to object if anyone ever tried to get too rough with him.  
  
Kyle was a little drunk, having sampled some vodka cranberry at Wendy’s house before they piled into the limo that bore them in ridiculous glory to P.F. Chang’s. Stan was wasted, and his elbow was on Kyle’s shoulder while they ordered food.   
  
“Crab wontons!” Stan bellowed. “Two orders. No, three.”  
  
“Don’t be disgusting,” Kyle said.  
  
“Yes, dear,” Stan said, and Kyle exchanged a look with Bebe, across the table. She’d broken up with Stan during junior year, and later claimed that Stan had called her ‘dude’ during sex.   
  
The meal was loud and disorienting, everyone talking at once. Stan was in great spirits, laughing at everything and jostling Kyle if he didn’t laugh, too, asking him what was wrong. Kyle had ordered a salad, but it was terrible, so he ended up eating one full plate of Stan’s crab wontons. He’d burned his tongue on the first one, and sat there glumly wishing that he could soothe the burn against Stan’s lips. He knew this was his fate, eternally: all throughout college he would fantasize about the taste of bad cafeteria food on Stan’s mouth, and when they were older and Kyle came over to watch the Broncos game he would obsess over the thought of tasting beer and potato chips on Stan’s tongue while Stan’s little wife clutched at his arm and leaned across his broad chest to ask Kyle how his love life was going.   
  
“What are you thinking about?” Stan asked, sort of swaying into Kyle’s field of vision. He was adding rum from a flask to his Pepsi at intervals. “You’re all, like. Deep in thought.”   
  
“I burned my tongue,” Kyle said.   
  
“Aw,” Stan said. “C’mere, there’s a trick.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“Just - come with me, dude, I’ll show you.” Stan found Kyle’s hand under the table and pulled him up from his chair. Kyle’s cloth napkin went tumbling from his thighs and down to the sticky P.F. Chang’s floor.  
  
Stan brought him to the men’s room, which was rather darkly mood-lit like the restaurant. It smelled of air freshener and hand soap, and there were a few massive stalls past the urinals, with wooden doors that went floor-to-ceiling. They sort of fell against the door of the furthest one, and Stan laughed, his mouth landing against the corner of Kyle’s left eye.   
  
“Dude, what?” Kyle said. His heart had been pounding since Stan took his hand. “You can’t just. You can’t—”   
  
“I want to fuck you,” Stan said, suddenly fixing a grave stare on Kyle, unblinking. “So bad. So, so bad. It’s legendary.”   
  
“You’re drunk,” Kyle said. He could feel himself go pale, crab wontons shifting about in his stomach uncomfortably.   
  
“I know,” Stan said. “But you said — your tongue, c’mere.”  
  
He pulled Kyle into the stall and fell against the door to shut it, squashing Kyle with a breathy kiss, taking the air out of his lungs. Stan’s drunken lack of coordination make Kyle’s eyes wet, and he took hold of Stan’s jaw with both hands to help guide him, making him go slower.   
  
“No, no,” Kyle said, whispering this against Stan’s lips. “This is all wrong.”   
  
“Shh, dude,” Stan said, and he pet Kyle’s cheek with his thumb. His touch was surprisingly steady, his other hand snug on Kyle’s waist. “It’s not wrong. Here, stick out your tongue a little, the burned part. Yeah, I just want to—” He sucked on it, gently. Kyle moaned and let his knees liquefy, weakening so that Stan had to catch him and hold their bodies flush together. “Better?” Stan said when he pulled back. He was really hard; so was Kyle.   
  
“Get soap,” Kyle said, whispering.  
  
This is really happening, Kyle thought, pressed face-first to the door, pants sagging around his knees, Stan’s soap-slick fingers squirming in his ass. He was losing his virginity, whimpering and drooling, his nails scraping against the door as his fingers flexed with every movement of Stan’s fingers. He was losing his virginity in a P.F. Chang’s bathroom, to Stan, spreading his legs for Stan’s cock when it pressed in between his ass cheeks.   
  
“Ready?” Stan whispered, his arm snaking around Kyle’s jittering chest.   
  
Unequivocally: no.   
  
“Yeah,” he said anyway, the word rasping out of him in some weird, unrecognizable sex voice. Stan pushed in, slow. Kyle screamed soundlessly against the door, his teeth nicking the wood. It was probably fake wood, he thought, growing dizzy from the pain. P.F. Chang’s; everything in here was so fake.  
  
“Oh, God,” Stan said when he was all in, mumbling against the back of Kyle’s ear. “I love you, mhm. Kyle, dude, you’re so. Love you so much.” He hugged both arms around Kyle and nuzzled at his neck. He was drunk; he’d said this before, and at that point the ‘fuck you’ that followed had been merely a verbal one. Kyle wept against the door, his weeping making his ass spasm and the burn briefly intensify, then fade into something almost nice.  
  
The door to the men’s room opened. Kyle remembered only then to latch the stall they were in, and he did, his fingers shaking. Stan sucked in a deep breath, and Kyle did, too. Suddenly he felt they were actually connected, for real, both of them waiting to hear what would happen out there. Stan sighed against Kyle’s neck, surprisingly soft.   
  
“I thought they were in here,” someone said: Craig. Horrible, horrible Craig.   
  
“Stan probably went outside to puke,” Clyde said. “Kyle wouldn’t want to miss that.”  
  
“I’m so fucking glad I’m not going to CSU,” Craig said. The water at the sink shut off, and Kyle could feel him preening, turning to check out his own ass in the mirror.  
  
“I’m going to CSU, though,” Clyde said.   
  
“I know,” Craig said. “Whatever. I thought we might catch them fucking in here. I’m so bored.”   
  
“We could fuck,” Clyde said, and Kyle’s whole body jerked with his effort to hold in a squawking laugh of disbelief. Stan pressed a grin to his neck, bouncing a little with his own concealed laughter. His hugeness was starting to feel okay inside Kyle’s ass, just okay.  
  
“Are you joking?” Craig said after a long pause.  
  
“I don’t know,” Clyde said. Craig groaned and stormed out. Clyde followed.  
  
“God,” Stan whispered. He twitched his hips a little; Kyle whimpered. “God, you feel good,” Stan said. “So tight. Are you okay?”   
  
“Mhm,” Kyle said. “Mostly.”  
  
“Shit, um, I can pull out if it’s too—”  
  
“No, don’t,” Kyle said, and he reached back to grab Stan’s ass, holding him in. “Just don’t move yet. Just stay like this.”  
  
“Okay,” Stan said, whispering again. He covered the back and sides of Kyle’s neck in soft little licks, otherwise staying perfectly still. Kyle took a few deep breaths, and he uncurled his fingers when he realized his hands were in fists against the door.   
  
“What about college?” Kyle said. He relaxed as much as he could, trembling.   
  
“What about it?” Stan asked.   
  
“How can we be roommates now? How can we even see each other? What are we doing?”  
  
“We can be roommates like this,” Stan said. “With sex and kissing.”   
  
“You’re drunk, Stan, you’re fucking drunk!”   
  
“I was playing it up a little,” Stan said, mumbling. Kyle’s eyes snapped open against the door, and his hands curled into fists again.  
  
“What.”   
  
“To, so. I’d have an excuse if you rejected me.”  
  
“I saw you drink all that rum, Stan!”  
  
“Yeah, well. I have a pretty high tolerance.”   
  
Despite this, after fucking Kyle in enough careful thrusts to come inside him, Stan pulled out, turned for the toilet, and threw up two plates worth of crab wontons. He later claimed it was mostly nerves.  
  
Kyle slumped against the door, holding his cock and watching vomit-thick drool slime from Stan’s lip and down into the toilet bowl. Thirty seconds later, he pushed Stan out of the way so he could throw up, too.  
  
He did not return to a P.F. Chang’s establishment for six years.  
  
5.  
  
When he did return, it was to celebrate his wedding reception. It was only $2,500.00 to rent the whole restaurant for two hours on a Tuesday afternoon, from 3:00 to 5:00. Stan and Kyle’s wedding was low budget, due to the small fortune they were spending on their honeymoon, and even Kyle couldn’t argue that, pathetic as it was, draining his P.F. Chang’s account to hold the reception there just made sense.   
  
“This is sick,” he said on the way there. Stan was driving, and Kyle was beside him in the passenger seat, the backseat full of bouncing condom balloons that Kenny had put there as a gag to greet them after their nuptials.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Stan asked. He touched Kyle’s cheek; he’d been caressing Kyle with embarrassing regularity all day. Stan was very romantic about the idea of marriage, whereas Kyle was mostly doing it for the tax break and the presents. He was romantic about Stan, but not about government-sanctioned institutions, especially one that had somehow led him back to P.F. Chang’s.   
  
“What’s wrong? How did you ever talk me into this? P.F. Chang’s! The same goddamn one where we fucked in a bathroom stall, oh my God.”   
  
“Well, it was the closest one to the ceremony,” Stan said. “And I know it wasn’t the best first time ever, but it’s sacred, dude. I loved you so much that I threw up from the intensity of it.”   
  
“You drank so much rum and ate so much crap fake Chinese food that you threw up. Ugh, God. And everyone knew.” They’d been applauded and whistled at when they returned to the table smelling like sex and puke. In some ways, it had been the worst night of Kyle’s life, but he’d gone home with Stan and dropped into bed with him, and when he woke up in Stan’s arms the next morning he felt much better, though his ass still stung, maybe from the cheap soap more than the big dick.

By the time they arrived at P.F. Chang’s, Sheila had already tied balloons to the chairs. Kyle was in need of a drink, having had only one modest glass of champagne before the ceremony, and he ordered an Organic Agave Margarita at the bar, which was open to anything not-top shelf. Stan and Kyle were leaving at dawn for the resort in Bhutan where they’d be spending the next ten days, and Kyle tried to be mindful of that when he saw that Wendy had brought Cartman, who she was lately sleeping with, the traitor.

“Isn’t irony beautiful?” Cartman said, lifting his bottle of Sierra Nevada.

“Eric,” Wendy said.

“I mean, you two fah—” He glanced at Wendy, and Kyle could see him calculating his likelihood of getting laid later; Cartman had always been good at strategy. “Fabulous homosexual friends of mine,” he amended, “Fucked in this very building – what was that? Five years ago?”

“Six,” Kyle said, and he threw back the rest of his margarita.

“Regardless,” Cartman said, making an expansive gesture with his beer. “That’s beautiful, Kyle, really. The circle of life.”

Just the smell of the entrees made Kyle a little queasy, but the “organic” tequila helped. Stan only ordered one plate of crab wontons, which made Kyle kind of sad. He ate half of them; in fact, Stan fed him one, and many photos were taken.

“What do you think?” Stan said, whispering in Kyle’s ear toward the end of the meal, when the wedding cake was being prepared for service. “Bathroom? Eh? For old times sake?”

Kyle had anticipated this. He slid a look of searing fury at Stan, and grinned when Stan visibly blanched.

“Yes,” Kyle said, though agreeing to this hadn’t been part of his plan. It was just that Stan looked so impossibly sweet when he was scared.

It took some time for them to discreetly escape, and Kyle had to tell his mother that they wanted to freshen up before the cake cutting photos. Their cake topper was a pair of old Terrance and Philip dolls, and Kenny had somehow constructed a wig of red yarn for the Philip one. Kyle suspected that Karen had knitted it.

In the bathroom, Kyle had to bite back his laughter at Stan’s obvious nerves. They went to the same stall where Kyle had lost his virginity, and Kyle latched the door before turning to Stan.

“Maybe I’ll just blow you,” Stan said, looking like he might cry.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, because it seemed kind of appropriate. He ended up blowing Stan, too, and neither of them threw up.

An hour later, after the cake was cut and distributed, people started to trickle out, wishing them a happy honeymoon and a nice life together. Kyle slid into a booth, enjoying the last of his moments as King of P.F. Chang’s. Bumpkins were lining up outside for their early, post-mall dinner, complaining and gesturing with shock at not being allowed to enter. Stan sat beside him and put his arm around Kyle’s shoulders.

“This is the booth where we sat on our first date,” Kyle said.

“Huh?” Stan said. “No – dude. Our first date was that day after, uh. After the bathroom. Remember? I took you to Longhorn’s. You had the salmon.”

“Sweetheart,” Kyle said, mumbling, and he laid his head on Stan’s chest. The organic tequila – or was it just the limes that were organic? – had made him a little drunk. He sighed and tugged gently on Stan’s tie. “No, no, I meant when we were fifteen. And I was supposed to be dating Butters’ henchman. But you came, Stan. You came and looked after me.”

“Oh, yeah, that,” Stan said. “When you made me chase you in the car.”

“Yes, that.”

“Mhm, yeah, maybe that was our first date. I guess I kinda wanted to sweep the dirty plates off the table and have you in the middle of P.F. Chang’s. Yeah, that’s true.”

“I know,” Kyle said, and he squeezed his eyes shut, grinning against Stan’s shirt. Stan had taken his jacket off and left it somewhere; it was rented, and they would have to find it before they left.

“I just looked at that kid,” Stan said, “That Dougie kid? And thought, what the fuck. No. Don’t even touch my Kyle. Did he?”

“Uh, no. Nobody really ‘touched’ me until your fingers were working hand soap into my ass. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Stan said, and they kissed. Somebody took a picture – Kenny, probably, or Wendy – and it was the last time they were seen together in a P.F. Chang’s. They were married for sixty-two years, but every time they passed one, even in moments of desperate hunger, they decided to hold out for something better.


End file.
